


a jewel mine own and not mine own

by mintpearlvoice



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, M/M, POV Female Character, Pre-Canon, Sibling Bonding, incessant biblical allusions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-12
Updated: 2017-01-12
Packaged: 2018-09-17 01:35:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9298343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mintpearlvoice/pseuds/mintpearlvoice
Summary: If it's a good day- if neither of them are shivering too hard to talk- Modesty can often wrangle a bedtime story.Credence tries never to get his sister's hopes up.





	

**Author's Note:**

> title is, of course, from Midsummer Night's Dream

Dante’s Inferno was enough of a religious text that Modesty was allowed to read bits from it. She knew the inner circle of hell, reserved for traitors, was a frozen lake in which Satan writhed; and in the winter, when the cold wind whistled through her creaky attic bedroom, she would pretend to be Dante following Virgil. If Credence wasn’t too tired- if he didn’t have that awful drawn look on his face- she’d ask him to be Virgil. He was good at it. He did different voices for the sinners, creaky or screeching, and even a high fluting voice for Beatrice. (If it was a good day; if he’d eaten, if there’d been enough food for them both to have a share.)

In early autumn, though, when the only hint of winter was a driving rain, an attic bedroom felt like the part of Purgatory reserved for the virtuous unbaptized. She could slip crumbs of stale bread to pigeons cooing and jostling on the windowsill, or lie on the lumpy mattress and trace the cracks in the wall.

The best part was that Mary Lou considered the treacherous spiral staircase beneath her dignity, and would rather screech upwards than scale the stairs.

“-yes, Mother. Of course, indeed. Yes, I’m listening. Don’t worry, I’ve done the dishes. I’ll make sure Modesty knows. Thank you, Mother, please pray for us both- good night-“

The litany increased in volume as Credence ascended the stairs. He ducked his head even further than usual under the roof’s low slope.

Modesty sat up, hugging the thin lump of her pillow. Her bare feet felt cold under the single blanket.   
“Well? What is it?”

He counted on his fingers. “No fire in the grate, no talking after the candles are out, and I’m to send you straight to bed without supper.”

“And that means?”

A hint of a smile. “Small fire, very quiet story, and half my supper.” As if pulling a rabbit from a hat, he produced an entire soft pretzel from his waistcoat pocket.

Modesty ate in greedy silence as Credence watched her. She gulped down the last bite. “Can I see your trick where you start a fire without using a match?”

“I told you, I only turn two sticks together. I got it out of a book. It’s nothing unnatural, I just have a knack for getting fires started.” He knelt before the gate, arranging pieces of crumpled newspaper, before beginning to turn a stick of kindling very rapidly. Two things happened at once: a fire sizzled to life, and Credence collapsed, trembling. His pale hands shook against the floorboards as he tried to get to his feet.  
With a stifled cry, Modesty ran to help him, but he waved her away. “Probably- ought not- to try that again,” he managed with a wan smile. “Tomorrow will be warmer, anyway, if we’re lucky.”

“She'll beat us if she finds this, anyway. No sense making things worse by trying again.”   
He rallied enough to ruffle her hair. “She'll beat me, Modesty. I'll tell her I found a match someone had dropped, and that it burned up in the grate.”

Modesty put her hands on her hips. “She always beats you. It's not fair.”  
“Boys feel things less than girls,” he answered, as casual as could be. “Get tidied up for bed, will you? I may have an excellent story to tell if you’re prompt and don’t waste candlelight.”

But it really wasn’t fair, she thought, scrubbing her face with hard soap and chill, brackish water. Credence felt things as just as much as she did- he noticed things she didn’t, like seagulls circling overhead, dandelions peeking through a gap in the cobblestones.

The fire flickered shadows on the walls. In the bed next to hers, Credence’s face was pale and blurry, like the moon.

“Well?” she said, drowsily. She reached out to touch his cheek, missed, curled back under the blankets. “Shall I get a story?”

“Of course.” He made a futile effort to plump his pillow, which was just as hard and understuffed as hers, settled for laying back on it anyway. “Now, while you were out, I met someone in the alleyway.”  
His stories often started like this. Ordinary things that might very well have happened, until he said something like "and then the drunk man took off his cloak, and I saw that he had enormous wings like a swan's, outlined in gold."

“What happened next?”

“I met a young man of no account whatsoever. Hunchbacked, plain, sallow, and so forth. And he told me- do you know what he said?”  
“No-o.”  
“He told me that he was personally acquainted with the management of Fairyland, and that they'd promised to come and look in on him once a week at the least.” With a nod, he continued in the most nonchalant tone imaginable. “It was terribly educational and improving. I'd be remiss in my brotherly duties if I didn't pass on information which you might someday need.”

Modesty hugged herself, stifling a squeak of excitement.

“Now, the King of Fairyland is like a well-made fire. All glow and not one ounce of smoke. He smells like someone who gets to wash every day in water that hasn’t been used before. Like a warm old coat. Or a cedar tree. But he walks like someone who’s never been shouted at to hurry up, so the woman who travels with him always arrives places first. The woman who accompanies him-  
“Is she his queen?” Modesty asked, excited. She was allowed to see the psalm that talked about the Sabbath day being God's queen.  
His voice grew soft, contemplative. “Ordinary men have wives, and ordinary kings have queens. I don't... I don't feel he's an ordinary king at all.” And, in his storytelling tone: “She is the grand vizier of Fairyland, and she looks like the outside of a museum.”  
“The outside of a museum? But that looks like an ordinary building.”  
“Exactly. But on the inside it’s chock-full of secrets and genius. And she can travel on a bolt of lightning, and fly as quickly as her thoughts. She is not ashamed of or disgusted by people, even when she ought to be, such as people who are crying when they haven't yet been given something to cry about. So she zooms about rescuing people who are hurt and in trouble. Cats who’ve fallen down wells, match girls freezing to death on corners. All that and more. And then the king comes and makes sure they stay rescued.”

Modesty liked the idea of that. Staying rescued. It was nearly as good as staying lost. Running away somewhere Mother would never track her down and scream and pull her braids. “And is he terrifically tall and handsome, like King David or so on?”  
“People nowadays are hardly ever as perfectly made as the ones in the Bible,” Credence teased, laughing. “He's rather short, and his hair is grey.”  
“But what does he look like? Kings ought to be handsome.”   
“Frighteningly serious, sometimes. Like a judge or a tombstone. But his smile is warm and kind and makes people wonder how they ever thought he could be cruel.”  
Warm and kind. It reminded her of distant memories; her sisters gathered around her, laughing, their red hair bright in the sun. Their father smiling as they skidded around the kitchen floor in their stocking feet. Sometimes, if she squeezed her eyes shut, she could almost remember her real name. “If the grand vizier can travel on lightning, what does the lord protector do?”  
“Nothing as loud or showy,” Credence said airily. “His greatest power is that whatever he says becomes true. One knows it to be true at once. Take an ordinary young person, for instance. Plain, sullen, probably possessed of a dozen and one original sins. And then the king of fairyland might draw near him and say something like-“ His shoulders straightened from their usual protective hunch, and his voice deepened slightly. “I looked up to your mother; it was a great shock when she died so suddenly.  
Or that one is a brave young man who has endured more than anyone ought to live though, and without so much as a word of complaint; and that things will change as quickly as one might arrange a shift in circumstances.  
One would hardly believe it to be true- if he wasn't the sort of man you believed utterly.”

“Credence,” she said, choosing her words carefully, “you sound a great deal like Moses telling the Israelites about the burning bush.” She listened for his breathing in the darkness. She heard nothing. As if, in his stillness, he was one with the shadows and the smoke. “Credence- have you- do you think you might have found someone who would help us?”

Syllables stumbled out in haste, jostling each other for position. “I don’t want to make any promises. Things might go wrong, he says there’s still some paperwork he needs to file- proof and things. You can’t just go taking people away from their homes, even if they are nearly twenty and possibly an orphan respectively. Not without the police setting up an awful hue and cry, and Mother has enough followers that, well-”

“I know.” She thought about the time they’d tried to run away. About the awful mad look Mary Lou had gotten in her eyes afterwards, about how Chastity had turned her head and pretended not to hear Credence’s quiet grunts of pain or Modesty’s own helpless screams. About the perfectly round burn on the sole of her foot. “We’d have to make sure that there was no way she could follow us.”

“Or that she’d profit enough to buy some new orphans.”

Modesty tried not to laugh; the noise turned into a yawn.

“Go to sleep, Modesty. If tomorrow isn’t the day we walk out of Egypt, maybe it’ll at least be the day when Moses’s staff turns into a snake and the water runs red with blood. And if we have to wade into the water before it parts, I’ll carry you on my shoulders.”

“You can’t swim, either.”

“No, but I’m taller. That ought to count.”

He might have whispered something to himself after that, in the fog between waking and sleep. Something half-heard and faint that Modesty only caught on the edge of a breath. An incantation, or the start of a prayer. Or a name.

 


End file.
